An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes (4 page)

Nothing can stop Archie right now.

Before long, he arrives at Mari's house. He steps out of the rain and onto the covered front porch. He wrings as much water as he can from his shirt and then shakes himself like a dog. It does not help much.

He examines the entryway and notices that the red front door is preceded by a glass entry door. He wonders if he should knock on the inner door or the outer door and decides on the inner door so she can hear it better but changes his mind when he realizes he'd have to open the outer door first and what if a neighbor thinks he's breaking in so he tries to remember what they usually do when he goes there for D&D.

The inner door swings open and Mari peers at him through the glass of the outer door. She's wearing a hoodie and pajama pants. Her dog, a brown lab, is at her knees.
Mari pushes the outer door open. “What are you doing just standing there? You look like a creepster.”

Archie runs a hand through his wet hair. “Oh. I didn't, uh, know how to knock.”

“You could have rung the doorbell.”

“Heh. Oh, yeah.” Archie pokes the button. The bell chimes behind Mari. He smiles. She appears to be unentertained. He notices that, behind her glasses, her eyes are rimmed red like she's been crying. He wonders if he should say something, but doesn't. The moment passes.

She pushes the door open all the way. Archie steps inside, dripping water everywhere. The dog begins lapping up the small puddles. “Sorry.”

Mari hands him a fluffy blue towel.

“Thanks,” he says and begins patting himself dry.

“Your clothes are soaked,” she says. “Be right back.” She disappears for a few seconds and returns with a folded pair of jeans and a shirt. She hands them to Archie. “My dad's.”

“Thanks,” he says and slips into the bathroom. He presses the clothes to his nose. They smell of laundry detergent.

He peels off his drenched clothes and balls them up. He stands there naked. In Mari's house. With her on the other side of the door. He takes a deep breath.

Then he realizes that there's no underwear in the clothes she brought him. Granted, it would be weird wearing her dad's underwear. But now he'll have to go commando in the pants.

Out of options, he puts on the jeans. It feels weird. He puts on the shirt, and it feels a little less weird. Examining himself in the mirror, he appears more awkward than usual thanks to the ill-fitting clothes. But nothing can stop Archie.

He steps out of the bathroom, smiling.

Mari folds her arms over her chest. “Just to be clear, I'm not going to have sex with you. Here, give me your wet clothes so I can throw them in the dryer.”

The comment catches Archie off guard, but he recovers. “Obviously,” he says, looking down at himself, “you can't afford this.”

“Seriously, though, I just needed to hang out with someone.”

“Everything okay?” he finally asks.

Mari shrugs. She pulls the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands. “I'd rather not talk about it. Let's just watch something.”

“You're the boss.”

Archie follows her down the hallway. He catches himself looking at her butt, so he shifts his gaze to the pictures on the walls. They've been there forever, but Archie doesn't remember ever looking at them. Most are school photos taken of Mari and her brothers, arranged in such a way that the subjects age in a linear progression. There are a few posed, professional shots of the entire family. In most they're all wearing matching outfits. Archie knows Mari was adopted, yet he's struck by how white the rest of her family is. They appear happy enough, but Mari's brown skin stands out. He wonders if any of it ever bothers her.

They enter the living room. Mari pops a disc into the DVD player while Archie sits down on the short side of the L-shaped sofa. Uninterested, the dog trots away and lies down with a huff on its bed in the corner. The rain picks up, thrumming upon the roof.

Mari turns on the television. A familiar theme song suddenly blasts through the surround sound.

“
Firefly
,” he says. “I approve.”

Mari turns to Archie and says something, but he can't hear her.

What?
he mouths.

She turns down the volume and repeats her question. “You want something to eat or drink? Like popcorn?”

“Why would I want to drink popcorn?”

She looks at him, unamused.

“Tough crowd,” Archie says.

“You know what I mean. Would you like something to eat—such as popcorn—and slash or, would you like something to drink—such as not popcorn?”

“Sure,” he says. “Popcorn sounds good. What kind of non-popcorn beverages do you have?”

“The usual.”

“All right, I'll take the purple stuff.”

Mari rolls her eyes and heads into the kitchen.

Archie stares at the menu screen and hums along with the theme music as he waits. Behind him, he hears Mari open and close a cabinet, and then rip open plastic packaging. The microwave door pops open and then slams shut, buttons beep, and then there's the steady hum of shooting particles. He takes a moment to appreciate the science behind that particular innovation, recalling when he had read somewhere that people used to call it a “science oven” back when it was first invented.

Archie drums his fingers on his knees. He looks down at his lap. The crotch region of the jeans are bunched up in such a way that he fears it looks like he has a boner, so he flattens it out. Just to be sure, he picks up a throw pillow and uses it to cover his lap.

He turns around to check on the snack progress and sees Mari bent over. She is looking for something at the back of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. It is a beautiful sight. Like two integrals ready to be solved. As he continues to watch, the popcorn kernels in the microwave start popping faster and faster. Just when it seems like they're going to explode, the microwave sounds a long beep and Mari straightens up. Archie turns back to the TV. He clears his throat and readjusts the pillow in his lap.

A few moments later, Mari returns to the living room carrying a glass of soda in each hand and a bowl of popcorn between her forearms. “Thanks for your help.”

“You're welcome,” Archie says.

Mari takes a seat at the opposite end of the couch from Archie and draws her legs up underneath her. She picks up the remote and presses play. “I guess chivalry really is dead.”

“I thought you were a modern woman,” Archie says.

When the episode ends, Archie and Mari can't stop talking about how great the show is and how much of a loss to the world it was when the network cancelled it before the conclusion of its first season.

Once they exhaust their conversation about the episode, Mari excuses herself. When she returns a few minutes later, she sits down just a couple feet away from Archie.

“So,” he says, checking his watch.

Mari props her left elbow on the top of the couch and leans her head against the palm of her hand. She smiles. “Want to watch another episode?”

Archie picks up the throw pillow and hugs it to his chest. “There's nothing more I'd rather do. In fact,” he says, turning to her and putting on a mock evil face, “I would kill my own mother to continue watching this show with you.”

Mari's smile disappears. She puts down the remote. She covers her face with her hands and leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

She starts sobbing. It is sudden and terrible.

Having never been confronted with a crying girl, Archie does not know what to do. He looks upon her as he might a newly arrived alien: perplexed by its strangeness and apprehensive of its potential to lead to the complete destruction of humanity.

According to the movies and TV he'd seen, he should move next to her, place an arm over her shoulders, and say something reassuring. Yet he doesn't dare touch her for fear of doing it incorrectly, and he doesn't say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing.

She continues sobbing into her hands.

“On second thought, it's getting kind of late,” he says.

She nods, face still hidden behind her hands.

“I'll let myself out,” he says, rising.

Archie stands there for a moment longer, replaying what he said. He does the math.

It doesn't add up.

“I'm sorry,” he says and then walks out, forgetting his clothes in the dryer.

He steps back into the rain, smiling no longer.

Mari sets her pen to the page, her head full of stories. She manages to write a couple paragraphs, but then the chattering Spanish from the waiting room's television colonizes her mind. After cursing herself for forgetting her headphones, Mari closes her notebook. She looks up at the screen.

There is a man sitting with a woman. Both look groomed yet unkempt, proud yet ridiculous. The host asks them a question, they respond. The crowd boos. The camera keeps cutting to a second man, standing backstage, pacing like a caged animal. When the second man finally decides to walk on to the stage, he rushes toward the first man, anger blazing in his eyes. The first man rises to meet him. Security guards materialize out of thin air and restrain the men. The camera keeps cutting between shots of the scuffle, the guffawing audience, and the eternally smirking and shrugging host.

Even though there are no subtitles, Mari can guess what is happening. The two men are probably brothers or best friends. The woman, originally one man's lover, now probably carries the child of the other.

Mari can't even begin to comprehend how people get into such situations—and then want to resolve it on national television. She wonders if the guests, the host, and the audience are even real. If they are, she wonders what the hell is wrong with them, why they feed off one another's pain like parasites.

“Can I turn this off?” Mari finally asks the receptionist.

The receptionist glances around the waiting room. She picks up the remote and hits the mute button.

“Thanks,” Mari says, though her eyes linger on the now pantomimed drama.

After summoning the power to look away, Mari opens her notebook and rereads what she had written, trying to regain her flow.

But she can't. It's gone. She can't find whatever words or sentences or ideas she meant to set down next. It is like walking into a room to retrieve something only to forget what it was she had wanted.

Mari sighs. Closes her notebook.

She leans back. A potted plant sits in the corner of the room. Mari cannot tell if it is real or fake. She scans its leaves for imperfections, always reliable evidence of authenticity, and then reaches over and takes one between her fingers. She concludes that it is fake.

She pushes around the magazines. None of them interest her, but one cover catches her attention. It features a girl riding on her mother's back, enjoying a day at the beach. This reminds Mari of when she was little and her mom used to take her out on “Ladies' Night” every Tuesday night. Usually, they would dress up and start with dinner at a nice restaurant. After dinner, her mom would have some surprise activity planned for them. Sometimes they'd see a movie that her brothers and dad would never be caught dead watching. Sometimes they'd go to the mall. Sometimes they'd paint pottery.

Most of it had been girlie stuff like that. Stuff her mom loved and Mari wished she loved more. But occasionally they'd go to the bookstore and Mari would be allowed to select any one book she wanted to buy. Sometimes they'd drive to one of the local colleges for a poetry reading. Or maybe they'd catch an old fantasy movie playing downtown. Stuff Mari enjoyed.

Once, they travelled to the shore even though it was an hour away, and even though it was the middle of winter. Mari was twelve. She remembers the Atlantic crashing into forever, cold beyond comprehension. And snow blanketed the beach—it glowed so that in the darkness they didn't even need flashlights. Each step pressed a fresh footprint into that bright, bright snow. When Mari's feet got too cold, her mom let her ride piggyback as they returned to the car.

But it has been years since the last Ladies' Night, all because of Mari.

The puzzled looks people gave them. The questions they asked. All because Mari and her adoptive mother did not match everyone's idea of mother and daughter. Their skin, their hair, their features—too different for the world to make sense of them. It had just become too much for her. So Mari had lied and told her mom she was getting too old for their weekly hangout.

Mari glances at a clock on the wall and finds that almost an hour has passed. She sighs, even though it's not like she has any Friday night plans.

The main doors into the waiting room suddenly slide open. A wrinkled old man, hunched over a walker, inches across the threshold. A tuft of white hair clings to one side of his bald, liver-spotted head. The receptionist greets him by name and tells him not to worry about signing in.

The man nods and then slowly makes his way toward the seats, approaching the row opposite of Mari. Once he arrives—Mari had serious concerns he might keel over at any given moment—he turns and carefully lowers himself into a chair as if he were trying to dock a spaceship with the International Space Station. The seat's foam cushion sighs as he finally lands. He then closes his eyes and either falls asleep or dies.

Mari looks back up at the television to watch the people argue. She considers asking the receptionist to unmute it, but that would be too embarrassing.

She looks back at the man. He has not moved. Mari begins to fear that he may have actually died. But then he lets out a prolonged fart. It starts out as a low rumble, picks up momentum, and then peters out in a few gradual toots. And just as the last of the gas seems to escape, there's one final, definitive blast. Almost like a sneeze.

But the man still sits with his eyes closed, showing neither motion nor shame.